(Page 277) THE antiquity of the Secret Doctrine may be better realised when
it is shown at what point of
history its Mysteries had already been desecrated, by being made subservient to
the personal ambition
of despot-ruler and crafty priest. These profoundly philosophical and
scientifically composed religious
dramas, in which were enacted the grandest truths of the Occult or Spiritual
Universe and the hidden lore
of learning, and become subject to persecution long before the days when Plato
and even Pythagoras
flourished. Withal, primal revelations given to Mankind have not died with the
Mysteries; they are still
preserved as heirlooms for future and more spiritual generations.

It has been already stated in Isis Unveiled, [Op. cit.,i. 15.] that so far back
in the days of Aristotle, the great Mysteries had already lost their primitive
grandeur and solemnity. Their rites had fallen into desuetude, and they had to a
great degree degenerated into mere priestly speculations and had become
religious shams. It is useless to state when they first appeared in Europe and
Greece, since recognised history may almost be said to begin with Aristotle,
everything before him appearing to be in an inextricable chronological
confusion. Suffice it to say, that in Egypt the Mysteries had been known since
the days of Menes, and that the Greeks received them only when Orpheus
introduced them from India. In an article “Was writing known before Pânini?”
[Five Years of Theosophy, p.258. A curious question to start and to deny, when
it is well-known even to the Orientalists that, to take but one case, there is
Yaska, who was a predecessor of Pânini, and his work still exists; there are
seventeen writers of Nirukta (glossary) known to have prescribed Yaska.] it is
stated that the Pândus had acquired universal dominion and had taught the
“sacrificial” Mysteries to other races as far back as 3,300 B.C. Indeed, when
Orpheus, the son of Apollo or Helios, received from his father the phorminx—the
seven-stringed lyre, symbolical of the sevenfold mystery (Page 278) of
Initiation—these Mysteries were already hoary with age in Central. Asia and
India.

According to Herodotus it was Orpheus who brought them from India, and
Orpheus is far anterior to Homer and Hesiod. Thus even in the days of Aristotle
few were the true Adepts left in Europe and even in Egypt. The heirs of those
who had been dispersed by the conquering swords of various invaders of old Egypt
had been dispersed in their turn. As 8,000 or 9,000 years earlier the stream of
knowledge had been slowly running down from the tablelands of Central Asia into
India and towards Europe and Northern Africa, so about 500 years B.C. it had
begun to flow backward to its old home and birthplace. During the two thousand
subsequent years the knowledge of the existence of great Adepts nearly died out
in Europe. Nevertheless, in some secret places the Mysteries were still enacted
in all their primitive purity. The “Sun of Righteousness” still blazed high on
the midnight sky; and, while darkness was upon the face of the profane world,
there was the eternal light in the Adyta on the nights of Initiation. The true
Mysteries were never made public. Eleusinia and Agrae for the multitudes; the
God ..ß...., “of the good counsel,” the great Orphic Deity for the neophyte.

This mystery God—mistaken by our Symbologists for the Sun—who was He? Everyone
who has any
idea of the ancient Egyptian exoteric faith is quite aware that for the
multitudes Osiris was the Sun in
Heaven, “the heavenly King,” Ro-Imphab; that by the Greeks the Sun was called
the “Eye of Jupiter,” as
for the modern orthodox Pârsi he is “the eye of Ormuzd:” that the Sun, moreover,
was addressed as the
“All-seeing God”( p....f.a.µ.. ) as the “God Saviour,” and the “saving God”
(..t... t.. s.t...a.).
Read the papyrus of Papheronmes at Berlin, and the stela as rendered by Mariette
Bey; [La Mére d’Apis,
p. 47.] and see what they say:

Glory to thee, O Sun, divine child! . . . . thy rays carry life to the pure and
to those ready. . . .The Gods
[the “Sons of God”] who approach thee tremble with delight and awe. . . . Thou
art the first born, the Son
of God, the Word. [One just initiated is called the “first-born,” and in India
he becomes dwija, “twice-born,”
only after his final and supreme Initiation. Every Adept is a “Son of God” and a
“Son of Light” after
receiving the “Word,” when he becomes the “Word” himself, after receiving the
seven divine attributes or
the “lyre of Apollo.”]

The Church has now seized upon these terms and sees presentments of the coming
Christ in these
expressions in the initiatory rites and prophetic utterances of the Pagan
Oracles.

The Sun as God - (Page 279) They are nothing of the kind, for they were applied
to every worthy Initiate. If
the expressions that were used in hieratic writings and glyphs thousands of
years before our era are now
found in the laudatory hymns and prayers of Christian Churches, it is simply
because they have been
unblushingly appropriated by the Latin Christians, in the full hope of never
being detected by posterity.
Everything that could be done had been done to destroy the original Pagan
manuscripts and the Church
felt secure. Christianity has undeniably had her great Seers and Prophets, like
every other religion; but
their claims are not strengthened by denying their predecessors.

Listen to Plato:

Know then, Glaucus, that when I speak of the production of good, it is the Sun I
mean. The
Son has a perfect analogy with his Father.

Iamblichus calls the Sun “the image of divine intelligence or Wisdom.” Eusebius,
repeating the words of
Philo, calls the rising Sun (a.at... ) the chief Angel, the most ancient, adding
that the Archangel who is
polyonymous (of many names) is the Verbum of Christ. The word Sol (Sun) being
derived from solus, the
One, or the “He alone.” and its Greek name Helios meaning the “Most High,” the
emblem becomes
comprehensible. Nevertheless, the Ancients made a difference between the Sun and
its prototype.

Socrates saluted the rising Sun as does a true Pârsî or Zoroastrian in our own
day; and Homer and
Euripides, as Plato did after them several times, mention the Jupiter-Logos, the
“Word” or the Sun.
Nevertheless, the Christians maintain that since the oracle consulted on the God
Iao answered: “It is the
Sun,” therefore
The Jehovah of the Jews was well known to the Pagans and Greeks;[See De
Mirville, iv.15]
and “Iao is our Jehovah.” The first part of the proposition has nothing, it
seems to do with the second
part, and least of all can the conclusion be regarded as correct. But if the
Christians are so anxious to
prove the identity, Occultists have nothing against it. Only, in such case,
Jehovah is also Bacchus. It is
very strange that the people of civilised Christendom should until now hold on
so desperately to the skirts
of the idolatrous Jews—Sabaeans and Sun worshippers as they were, [ II. Kings,
xxiii, 4-13.] like the
rabble of Chaldaea—and that they should fail to see that the later Jehovah is
but a Jewish development
of the Ja-va, or the (Page 280) Iao, of the Phoenicians; that this name, in
short, was the secret name of a
Mystery-God, one of the many Kabiri. “Highest God” as He was for one little
nation, he never was so
regarded by the Initiates who conducted the Mysteries; for them he was but a
Planetary Spirit attached to
the visible Sun; and the visible Sun is only the central Star, not the central
spiritual Sun.

And the Angel of the Lord said unto him [Manoah] “Why askest thou thus after my
name,
seeing it is secret.” [Judges, xiii, 18. Samson, Manoah’s son, was an Initiate
of that “Mystery”
Lord, Ja-va: he was consecrated before his birth to become a “Nazarite” (a
chela), an Adept.
His sin with Delilah, and the cropping of his long hair that “no razor was to
touch” shows how
well he kept his sacred vow. The allegory of Samson proves the Esotericism of
the Bible, as
also the character of the “Mystery Gods” of the Jews. True, Môvers gives a
definition of the
Phoenician idea of the ideal sunlight as a spiritual influence issuing from the
highest God, Iao,
“the light conceivable only by intellect—the physical and spiritual Principle of
all things: out of
which the soul emanates.” It was the male Essence or Wisdom, while the primitive
matter or
Chaos was the female. Thus the first two principles, co-eternal and infinite,
were already with
the primitive Phoenicians, spirit and matter. But this is the echo of Jewish
thought, not the
opinion of Pagan Philosophers.]

However this may be, the identity of the Jehovah of Mount Sinai with the God
Bacchus is hardly
disputable, and he is surely—as already shown in Isis Unveiled—Dionysos. [See
Isis Unveiled. ii. 526]
Wherever Bacchus was worshipped there was a tradition of Nyssa, [Beth-San or
Scythopolis in Palestine
had that designation: so had a spot on Mount Parnassus. But Diodorus declares
that Nyssa was between
Phoenicia and Egypt: Euripides states that Dionysos came to Greece from India:
and Diodorus adds his
testimony: “Osiris was brought up in Nyssa, in Arabia the Happy: he was the son
of Zeus, and was
named from his father (nominative Zeus, genitive Dios) and the place
Dio-Nysos”—the Zeus or Jove of
Nyssa. This identity of name or title is very significant. In Greece Dionysos
was second only to Zeus, and
Pindar says: “So Father Zeus governs all things, and Bacchus he governs also.”]
and a cave where he
was reared. Outside Greece, Bacchus was the all-powerful “Zagreus, the highest
of Gods,” in whose
service was Orpheus, the founder of the Mysteries. Now, unless it be conceded
that Moses was an
initiated Priest, an Adept, whose actions are all narrated allegorically, then
it must be admitted that he
personally, together with his hosts of Israelites, worshipped Bacchus.

And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah Nissi [or, Iao-nisi,
or again
Dionisi]. [Ex., xvii. 15.]

To strengthen the statement we have further to remember that the place where
Osiris, the Egyptian
Zagreus or Bacchus, was born, was Mount Sinai, which is called by the Egyptians
Mount Nissa. The
brazen serpent was a nis,
, and the month of the Jewish Passover is Nisan.